Copy That

If Rowan’s medium were software instead of words, he might have avoided the guilt and shame that derailed him. In the world of open-source software, there is no shame in copying. Indeed, software reuse is widely recognized as a virtue; a considerable amount of open-source software is written specifically to aid in the finding and sharing of other open-source projects. Learning to write software is like learning to write prose or music in that it involves combinations of reading, writing, and copying. Some programmers choose to fix bugs or make improvements to existing programs. Others, like Rowan, create new works by taking multiple other projects, in part or in whole, and combining them to make something new. And then there are programmers who are happiest creating original software, starting with nothing more than the ideas in their own heads. Widdicombe quotes Charles McCarry, one of the authors who involuntarily contributed to Rowan’s work: “All that cutting and pasting and no joy. Pretty good editor, obviously.” I think this kind of attitude comes from one kind of creator: the kind who makes something from scratch and fails to recognize the joy that can be found in other acts of creation.